Chorizo burger delights dads
The other weekend we went to a place called The Bad Apple in Chicago. The menu was mostly burgers, big burgers, with lots of different toppings like figs and cheeses I hadn't heard the names of before.
I ordered Elvis's Last Supper made with peanut butter and bacon. It sounded like a weird concoction, but it was actually pretty good. I even took the leftovers in my lunch the next day.
Burgers are really popular these days, but you don't have to go to a restaurant to get them. You can make them right at your house. My dad's a big burger fan so I decided to make him one for Father's Day. Since my dad also likes chorizo, a spicy Mexican sausage, I came up with the idea to combine the two into Nacho Burgers.
To complete the nacho idea, we formed the burgers into triangle shapes to look like a tortilla chip and we topped it with Chihuahua cheese, a mild cheese that melts onto the burger very well.
We also cut the buns into triangles. You can serve these burgers with avocado slices or guacamole or salsa, black olives, tomatoes and, if your father likes things spicy, jalapeño slices, or gardinaire. My mom made a really easy chipotle ketchup that we put on ours.
A word from Mom: Making burgers with your kids provides a prime opportunity to talk about food safety. Remind them to wash their hands well after touching raw meat and keep the raw meat contained to one work bowl. Should the raw meat touch another surface, wipe it down well with a bleach solution.
A general rule of thumb with forming burgers is not to handle to meat too much for fear of working the moisture out of it, but we didn't find that to be an issue with this recipe. Fresh chorizo contains flavorful fat that spreads moisture throughout the patties, so much so that even burgers cooked to the well-done end of the spectrum were not dried out.